• James "I videoblogged Ron Paul from my college dorm" Kotecki showers praise on NJ gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie's online campaign.
• While GOP online ad maven Eric Frenchman explains why NJ independent gubernatorial candidate Chris Daggett is AWOL online.

Semi-pro campaign journalism gets a mid-term review; Republican consultant launches NoJohn.com; Chuck DeFeo shares his secrets for getting attention online; Obama gets naked with his earmarks, will Clinton follow?; and now you can listen in too on those campaign conference calls.

UPDATE Dec. 17; 9:56 AM: Ron Paul broke another record - hauling in $6M in 24 hours.

The Boston Globe is reporting that Ron Paul's loyal supporters have triggered their second "Money Bomb," and have already pulled in over $2M (as of 10:30 AM EST).

Of note, Ron Paul's fourth quarter total has exceeded $15M (his goal was $12M).

More after the jump...

More news about the anti-Thompson site PhonyFred.org and its connection to the Romney campaign; the Huffington Post, Yahoo, and Slate team up to produce a "Mashup" presidential forum, though it might not allow for mashups after all; TechRepublican introduces a new policy series; Unity08 releases a study that suggests that Americans are fed up with the two-party system; Barack Obama is on LinkedIn; Fred Thompson needs to rename his FredCast section (any ideas?); and Hillary Clinton needs some widgets.

The Web on the Candidates

In a piece about Fred Thompson's fundraising strategies, techPresident's (and TechRepublican's) David All discusses the important role micro-donations will play in the campaign: "He has more of an Internet presence than any announced candidate. There's a heck of a lot more donors who can give $5 or $10 on the Internet than those who can give $2,300." All elaborates in a post on TechRepublican, calling the strategy the "Long Tail of political fundraising." This year, Barack Obama has proven that tens of thousands of supporters donate $5, $10, or $20 can be just as effective -- or possibly more effective -- than just approaching the heavy-hitters. You can approach these micro-donors again and again, whereas the big donors quickly max out. While we've yet to witness Thompson's fundraising strategies, All implies that his online popularity will lead to this Long Tail approach.

The Web on the Candidates

Blogpac, a group comprised of MyDDers Matt Stoller, Chris Bowers, and Mike Stark that gives grants to online progressive activists, has awarded $1000 to former John Edwards blogger Amanda Marcotte "for her courage in the face of an irresponsible media." Earlier this year, a mini-scandal erupted after conservatives criticized comments Marcotte had written on her Pandagon blog before she was hired by the Edwards campaign. In the post announcing the award, Mike Stark gives us Marcotte's story, from the time she was hired by the campaign (she was working as a financial aid counselor at UT-Austin) to how the cable news sites helped blow the thing out of proportion to how and why she resigned from the campaign.

Jose Antonio Vargas of the Washington Post explains that the Democrats are beating the GOP online, getting more traffic, raising more money, and gaining more popularity on the "social-networking triumvirate" of Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube. TechPresident's Mike Turk says that it goes beyond using the right technologies. "They've all got Web sites. Yes, they're doing videos. Yes, some are blogging. But that's not enough to really connect with voters." And while Republicans are fighting back, with TechPresident's David All forming TechRepublican and former Reagan campaign aide Charlie Gerow starting QubeTV to counter what he calls the "liberal bias" of YouTube, All says "for the most part Republicans are stuck in Internet circa 2000."

The Web on the Candidates

TechPresident blogger David All has started a new blog, TechRepublican.com (nice name David!) that wants to get the Republican establishment to embrace Web 2.0 strategies. "While the Internet has grown rapidly, the Party apparatus and its top officials are operating in a disconnected, Web 0.5 world. The result is that our message is failing to penetrate the modern world where millions of independent voters and modern Republicans spend a majority of their time," All writes. All and friends want to galvanize "Gen Nexters" (ooh, that term hurts) to "think, discuss, read, collaborate, criticize, share, and act to make a difference" in the Republican Party, and to usher the party into the 21st century. It's big project that will benefit from David's bottomless well of energy. We wish him luck. Also check out DomeNation, a weekly show on YouTube with David and Jerome Armstrong which will focus on politics and technology.

Following up on his analysis of who's buying Google text ads for Democratic candidates, Steve Patterson of the Bivings Report takes a look at who's buying ads for the Republicans. In addition to gear from Zazzle.com, several of the candidates are buying ads under others' names. For example, Rudy Giuliani is buying ads for searches for himself, Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, and John McCain, and only Giuliani and McCain are taking out ads against their own sites.